Who’s Anti-American?

Yesterday, one dear reader wrote in to say we were ‘cynical’ and ‘anti-American’.

Today, we rise to defend our reputation…such as it is.

Guilty as charged

Cynical?

Nah… We’d need a big dose of positive thinking and earnest optimism to be cynical.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, people who are cynical are ‘suspicious’, ‘doubting’, and ‘sceptical’.

We’re way beyond that. We’re pretty sure that the system is rigged…and rotten.

Elections are exercises in solemn deceit. And the Fed’s management of the economy is a mixture of delusion and self-serving scam.

We don’t have much doubt about it. That’s just the way it is.

As for ‘anti-American’, our accuser needs to clarify the allegation.

Is he talking about the Deep State?

The empire?

Or is he talking about the 50 sovereign states…and the Old Republic?

Or the language? The culture? Reality TV…the Kardashians…NASCAR racing…Old Faithful and the mighty Mississip’?

No one can be anti-America; America is too many things to too many people.

But if he’s talking about the federales who control half our national output…tie us in knots with Obamacare, National Labor Relations Board rules, and all their other dopey programs…and stomp around the world trying to justify their trillion-dollars-a-year security budget…

…if he’s talking about Hillary, Bernie, The Donald, the Bushes, et al…and all the 535 members of the US Congress…and the 2,783,000 zombies on the US payroll…

…if he’s talking about the connivers who pump out phony credit…stifle real savings…sabotage real wealth creation…and shift trillions of dollars from the people who earned it to the cronies favoured by the Establishment…

If he’s talking about THAT America, he’s right. We’re guilty as charged. And we’re not alone. Apparently, about half the country is ‘anti-American’.

‘The “establishment” composed of journos, BS-vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent seekers and other “well-thinking” members of the vocal elites are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments. People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment.’

In Japan, it has done neither — the yen is strengthening as the economy weakens.

NIRP was always an ‘experimental’ policy.

Central banks in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, the Eurozone and Japan have all pushed their target lending rates into negative territory. All that has been learned so far (apart from that this doesn’t work) is that sales of home safes go up…as people take out cash and keep it at home.

Negative interest rates amount to a tax on savings. You pay to save instead of being paid to save. Whether the people hoarding cash are worried about the prospect of paying a negative interest rate tax on their bank deposits…or anticipating some more awful crisis…we don’t know.

More to come on QE and negative rates…and why they really are old-fashioned ‘money printing’ after all.

For now, let us return to the ‘anti-American’ allegation.

Anti-American…in Maryland

We’re fond of the place we grew up — the Maryland Tidewater. At least, we are fond of it as it was when we grew up in it.

But it has changed.

Last week, the Maryland State Senate voted to change the words of the state song, bringing it more in line with the spirit of the Empire.

The song recalls the period — in the early 1860s — in which Maryland was attacked…by the United States of America. ‘Northern scum’ is how our state song describes its historic enemies.

Maryland was a ‘border’ state…not sure how it felt about the secession movement. Then the Yankees invaded, cutting off civilized discussion on the matter.

They arrested Baltimore’s mayor, the city council, the police commissioner, and the entire board of police. All were held without charges. Habeas corpus was suspended.

Then, when the Supreme Court ruled that the feds had no power to ignore constitutional protections, Abe Lincoln simply ignored the Supreme Court. He continued to hold his prisoners in the ‘American Bastille’ — Fort McHenry.

One of the prisoners — held without charges — was the grandson of Francis Scott Key, who had written the American national anthem.

He must have seen the black humour of his situation. In 1814, during Britain’s attack on Fort McHenry, his grandfather had wondered whether the flag still flew ‘o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave’.

Since founding Agora Inc. in 1979, Bill Bonner has found success and garnered camaraderie in numerous communities and industries. A man of many talents, his entrepreneurial savvy, unique writings, philanthropic undertakings, and preservationist activities have all been recognized and awarded by some of America’s most respected authorities. Along with Addison Wiggin, his friend and colleague, Bill has written two New York Times best-selling books, Financial Reckoning Day and Empire of Debt. Both works have been critically acclaimed internationally. With political journalist Lila Rajiva, he wrote his third New York Times best-selling book, Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, which offers concrete advice on how to avoid the public spectacle of modern finance. Since 1999, Bill has been a daily contributor and the driving force behind Markets and Money.

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